River News: Our View

Two days ago, on June 19, the nation celebrated the federal holiday of Juneteenth, though each year since it became a holiday in 2021 the celebrations have become more divisive and partisan — just like everything else in this country.

As we round the corner of the holiday for the fourth time, many conservatives have now decided we should get rid of it. A recent University of Massachusetts Amherst poll shows that just 13 percent of Republicans support keeping it, and a number of conservative activists have actually called for repealing it.

So why are many conservatives opposed to the holiday? 

No, it’s not because they are racist. Emphatically not. In fact, it might be more accurate to say they oppose it in part because they are accused of being racist. That goes for black conservatives as well as white conservatives.

The truth is, most conservatives oppose it because they have become the targets of an intense racialization of politics by the progressive movement, in which all disagreements with a leftist agenda gets you called a racist and whole lot of other things.

More specifically to the holiday, for the Left Juneteenth is less about celebrating the end of slavery in this country, which is its true reason for being, than about using it as propaganda to support extreme racial policies, such as reparations — which, ironically, are themselves overtly racist.

Now, in the legacy media especially, Juneteenth is seen and reported as an act of rebellion and defiance — social justice! — against an oppressive white supremacist politics that our nation’s fundamental principles and institutions supposedly, in this world view, not only represent but support and re-nourish generation after generation.

And so on ABC News, we see this headline: Why Black joy on Juneteenth is an act of resistance against racism.

Or from the Washington Post: Juneteenth shows that black freedom remains elusive.

Or from the Center on American Progress: Juneteenth Reflects the Many Ways Justice Is Systemically Delayed for Black Americans.

Yes, the progressives and media scream, our nation still systemically oppresses black people. No progress has been made. White people are still racist and still your oppressor, after all these years.

In just four short years, that has become the public message of Juneteenth. It’s not a holiday but an indictment of white people in America, and an indictment driven by politics, just like those aimed at former President Donald Trump.

No wonder so many people wish it would go away. Rather than celebrate the end of something monstrous and to hail a new beginning, not to mention to serve as a reminder of past horrors to guard against, we are told that there has been no new beginning, that shape-shifting slavery is alive and well, and that it can only be ended by abolishing our democratic republic.

Juneteenth is the new delivery vehicle for that message.

Conservatives should resist the temptation to play this game. After all, it was Trump who first called for Juneteenth to become a federal holiday. It didn’t make it to a vote until after he left office, but when it did come before Congress it passed the Senate unanimously and the House by 415-14.

The truth is, the holiday garnered Trump’s support and overwhelming bipartisan favor because, once upon a time, it was not a controversial but truly celebratory holiday. 

As Kevin Roberts, who is not only the president of The Heritage Foundation but also a Texas historian, recounts so well this week, the holiday began as a celebration of the end of slavery in Texas, commemorating the day that “Union Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, informing Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the state’s slaves, and marking the end of slavery under the Confederacy.”

That was 1865. The next year, Roberts wrote, Galveston began celebrating “Jubilee Day,” and over time the name evolved to Juneteenth. The holiday made its way to the national stage in 1979 when Democrats sponsored legislation to make Juneteenth a paid state holiday. The Texas Republican governor at the time signed the bill into law.

To be sure, racial oppression, and not even slavery, died on the day Juneteenth was born. Jim Crow laws and Jim Crow “justice,” not to mention hard-line segregation and discrimination, continued to prevail in too much of the land for way too long.

Over time, however, tremendous progress was made. And that was Juneteenth’s importance, as Roberts points out.

“The holiday celebrates what President Abraham Lincoln called ‘a new birth of freedom’ for America,” Roberts wrote. “It celebrates the completion of the work of July 4, 1776 — the extension of liberty to all Americans. It also commemorates the untold numbers of young men who died in the war fighting for that freedom.”

We wouldn’t necessarily agree wholeheartedly with that statement, that is to say, Juneteenth did not complete the work of freedom in this country but it sure was one more plank on the road to liberty for millions of Americans who were now free to make the trek.

The emergence of critical race theory, and its dominance in progressive circles, has eradicated that celebration of progress, because racial identity politics can only prevail if the left can propagandize the American people to believe no progress has been made.

Polarization, chaos, and disruption is their preferred method when it comes to their politics, and for holidays it is no different. Columbus Day has been branded as a celebration of colonialism (and racism of course), while Christmas has been painted as a cultural presentation of Christian domination. Again, white over black.

And so with Juneteenth. Progressives have used it to drive a stake into the soul of the country, setting people against people, and holiday against holiday. After it became an official federal holiday, radicals immediately proclaimed Juneteenth ‘America’s true Independence Day,’ and progressives informally renamed it “Juneteenth National Independence Day.”

They simultaneously called for boycotting any celebration of July 4.

Given the political volleyball the holiday has become, it’s not surprising so few conservatives want any part of it. But they should fight the urge to dismiss it as insignificant and even harmful and stand up for what it truly is — yet another day to celebrate America’s unique freedoms and the constitution’s firm commitment to liberty.

In his commentary, Roberts called for celebrating Juneteenth as the first day of a two-week national celebration of independence and freedom, stretching from June 19 to July 4.

It’s not a bad idea. Indeed, in many parts of this country, blacks and other minorities are in fact subjected to continued discrimination, including racial profiling. As Title IX collapses beneath the weight of a culturally-driven movement to erase women’s rights, gender discrimination is on the rise in too many American institutions.

The chilling anti-semitic marching through our college campuses and through many of our streets, marking red triangles on Jewish homes and physically harassing Jews for being Jews, recalls 1930s Germany. Everywhere progressives are embracing the politics of intolerance, and racial and gender discrimination is their time-proven tool.

But it’s equally important to grasp that, under a progressive Biden administration, whites have been subjected to relentless attempts to persecute and discriminate against them, and that’s not hyperbole. The administration, through racial equity policies, seeks to give preference for grants and other federal funding on the basis of skin color.

To cite just one example, the American Rescue Plan created a $3.8 billion program that would pay farmers and ranchers of color up to 120 percent of their outstanding loans, regardless of financial need. Thankfully, the courts struck that down.

There’s no place in our society for discrimination against anyone on the basis of skin color or race or gender. And that’s the real message of Juneteenth — it celebrates the end of slavery but it subtly reminds us that always a new slavery is on the horizon, and no race or gender or group of people is necessarily exempt from its handcuffs.

We must form an iron wall against the tyranny of such oppression by admitting the mistakes and crimes of the past, by joining together to celebrate the defeat of such horrors, and then standing together, celebrating diversity and with it the freedom of all to succeed and be free.

As Juneteenth is just behind us, and July 4 just ahead of us, let us as Americans take the mission of individual liberty to heart. Let us celebrate our passion for it, from Juneteenth to Independence Day.

For with the triumph of individual liberty comes the final defeat of bigoted oppression.